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Color/Appearance: Heartwood is usually white to reddish brown, with pale sapwood that isn’t clearly distinguished from the heartwood. Color tends to darken with age.
Grain/Texture: Grain is straight, with a uniform medium-coarse texture.
Rot Resistance: Rated as non-durable to perishable regarding decay resistance, with little resistance to insect attacks.
Workability: Generally easy to work with both hand and machine tools. Glues, stains, and finishes well.
Odor: No characteristic odor.
Allergies/Toxicity: Although severe reactions are quite uncommon, fir in the Abies genushas been reported to cause skin irritation. See the articles Wood Allergies and Toxicityand Wood Dust Safetyfor more information.
Pricing/Availability: Balsam fir is used as construction lumber and is commonly grouped together with other species of spruce and pine and sold under the more generic label spruce-pine-fir, or simply SPF. Prices should be moderate for such utility lumber, though clear, quartersawn, or other such specialty cuts of fir lumber are likely to be more expensive.
Sustainability: This wood species is not listed in the CITES Appendices, and is reported by the IUCN as being a species of least concern.
Common Uses: Construction lumber, paper (pulpwood), plywood, and other utility wood purposes.
Comments: Balsam Fir is a favorite Christmas tree species, and its resin is used to make Canada balsam. Such resin (when purified) has very good optical qualities, and was used as an adhesive in bonding optical elements and lenses up until the 1940s, when it was replaced by synthetic resins.
Fir is divided into different groupings, with the primary species in the western United States belonging to the white fir group, while Balsam Fir being the sole commercial species in eastern North America.
Many species of fir have excellent stiffness-to-weight ratios, rivaling other softwood species such as Sitka spruce (known for its combination of low density and relatively high modulus of elasticity).
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